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Short Stuff: Chastity Belts · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave's here in spirit, and that means
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: this is short stuff, which already said, which is a
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: waste of time. Let's just start, which is funny because
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Jerry is actually here. I think supposedly she is, but
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard from her in a while, so who
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: knows she's here. But then she's like, I can't be
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: bothered with those twelve minute episodes. Dave here take it?
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah I can't. There's only so much of these shmos
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I can take. Jerry has a lot on her plate,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and we we're glad she's still around doing our full
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: length episodes, right, Yeah, we are. We're very hashtag blessed
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to have Jerry still working. Left us in the dirt
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a long time ago, totally, and she doesn't because I
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: secretly suspect that she likes us. So Chastity Belts, I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: don't think I ever got the memo. And we'll go
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: ahead and spoil this right up front. Uh, that Acity
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Belts were we're probably not even a real thing used
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: for that the purpose that we all think they were
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: used for. Yeah, I mean, I guess I never did
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: either I never really sat around and gave some thoughts,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: so like reading this, I wasn't like blown away, but
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: it it does occur to me that, um, I guess
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I had always thought that they were a real thing,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: and they are technically a real thing, but they're just
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: not from the time we thought they were from. And
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: it all seems to just be uh misinterpretation of potentially
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: an old timey joke that we just lost the punchline
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to over the years. Yeah, I think maybe that's kind
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of sad that this could have been a very believable
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: thing that they did in medieval times, you know, because
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: it seems like something that could could have happened. Well.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Part of it, though, is is like this desire from
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: people looking backward and saying, like, look, how dumb and
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: savage and brutal and just uncaring those people were back then,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: And it gives us a sense of self satisfaction and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that that's why, like basically myths like this are allowed
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: to perpetuate and it's really just a a misunderstanding. But
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: it also prevents us from understanding those cultures a little
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: better than we do because we just think they're dumb
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and backwards instead. So it's a it's a real issue.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: It's probably the greatest issue humanity has ever faced. Chastity
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: belts in the myth behind them, So I guess we
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: should say what they are. I kind of figured everyone knows.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: But if you have never heard of a chastity belt,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the legend was that if you could picture basically um
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: metal underwear that a man would put on his wife
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that is locked onto their body um like with a padlock,
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and it had a couple of openings for going pp
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and poopoo, and sometimes they were gussied up with like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: hearts and flowers and stuff. And the idea was like, well,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: I'm going out of town on a on a rampage,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: like I don't want you messing around on me. I'm gone,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: so I'm gonna I'm gonna lock your private parts away
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: basically behind this iron underwear. And that's what a chastity
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: belt was. Yeah, And if you look at pictures of
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: some of these chastity belts, like they like the the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: place where what did you say you go peepe and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: poop poo like the the the holes are exit only
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: because they have like metal teeth like she carved into them.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: So it's like, yeah, it's not meant to mess around. Um,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: and when you look at these things, you're like, this
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: can't be right, Like is this for real? And it
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: certainly seems that way because you can see these things
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: with your own eyes. But the problem is is they
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: the things you're seeing with your own eyes come much
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: later than than the age that we attribute them to write. Yeah,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: so a guy actually wrote a book on this. His
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: name was Albrecht Klassen, and he wrote The Medieval Chastity
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Belt Colon a myth making process. Boy, I'm gonna flip
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: my lid if we ever get a book that comes
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: through this podcast it doesn't have a colon. Uh oh yeah,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Like yeah, like just in our research, you mean, yeah,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: that's not a novel. I dare somebody to write one. Well,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I mean we did well. Ours feels like as a colon,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't test it definitely does. The colon is
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: implied for sure. Uh so that this is the book
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: that all Wrecked Chasin wrote and basically he's like listen
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: poets wrote about it. Uh, you know, there were artists
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: who made these things, but it's basically, um, it seems
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to be just a big sort of practical joke or
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: or maybe he's the equivalent of like an editorial cartoon
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: or something in its origin because the first mention of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it comes from Conrad with a K. Kaiser von Eichstadt,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: great name, and this was an engineer who designed all
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: this technology around sieges like weapons and and defenses and stuff.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: And he wrote in the early fifteenth century about a
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: device in a manuscript called Bellafortis meaning strong in War,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: which was just a big catalog of like military gadgets,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and among them was a chastity belt. Yeah, because I
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: mean this was frequently supposedly used by men who were
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: leaving for war, um, while they were gone, like you're
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: saying they would they would use it while they were
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: out of town or whatever. So it would kind of
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: make sense that it would it would be in this
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: you know, um military gadget book um, and you would say, okay,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: proof positive, this thing was written in the fourteen hundreds,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: early fourteen hundreds. This is a medieval device, and this
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: is possibly where it was invented, was in Belafortis. But
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: the problem is is if you go through Bellafortis with
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a scrutinizing eye, you're going to see that there's other
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: stuff in there that don't quite add up, like um
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: a machine that makes you invisible um or a device
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: that propels you um through fart power. That's my favorite.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: There's a chariot apparently that shaped like a cat. So
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: the while a lot of the stuff that von Eichs
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: thought was was designing and creating was real and legitimate,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: he also was apparently not shy about peppering his works
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: with joke stuff as well. Right, And there were other
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: instances where it was clearly used in a satirical way,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: uh like a political cartoon basically of the time. There
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: was one in German from the sixteenth century that has
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: this sort of older gentleman saying goodbye to his young
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: wife and she is naked except for this chastity belt,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and then behind a curtain is her younger lover sort
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of hiding with a chastity belt shaped key, and the
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: husband has these donkey ears growing out of his head.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: So this all sort of leads us to believe that
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: this was kind of a joke, not something that was
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: really used. No, and maybe it was even originally used
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and described metaphorically, and it just kind of took off
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: from there, almost like a medieval meme. But the fact
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: is there are chastity belts in existence, and I think
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: we should take a break and then we'll come back
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and talk about where those came from. How about that?
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: What a perfect spot. Okay, Chuck. Where did the chastity
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: belts that you can actually go see in a museum
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: come from? They come from much later. They come from
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: probably the nineteenth century. There was a little Gothic revival
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: thing that happened then, and you know, iron and steel
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: were much more readily available as Europe became more industrialized,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and they started making things out of them, and they
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: you know, obviously they made things like bridges and things
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: like that, but they also made things for fun. And
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: it looks like there were these manufacturers in England who said,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you know what, there are these curiosity shows and museums
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that would that would pay for chastity belts to display them,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: and so we're gonna start making them as sort of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: a joke. Yeah. So the idea was that the Victorians
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: were wound up so tight and we're so proper that
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they would they would expel their prurient interest in uh
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: bound up sexuality and like side shows and stuff like that.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: They would pay to see things like torture devices or
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: like a chassis or something. And for their part, part
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of it also was being able to become self satisfied
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: with your your own culture, in your own place in
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: history by mocking or or judging earlier ones. But the
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: fact is these things were all they were recently made
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: and apparently passed off as much older than they actually were.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: And so some museums said, well, we need to get
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: these out of our collection because we've been we've been
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: displaying them as medieval and they were really created twenty
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: years ago. Um. And the British Museum actually still has one,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: but there, um they have a little placard next to
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: theirs that basically says, uh, there's no real evidence that
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: any of these were actually created or used during the
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: medieval era. Yeah. I love that last line. It says
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that the evidence is largely anecdotal or in burlesque fiction.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Very tantalizing. So yeah, they kept one around because you know,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I guess they thought it was still funny to look
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: at in their proper context. Um, which it's really not,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you know when you think about it, right exactly, But yeah,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: it looks like it was basically an urban legend from
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: back then that came about many years later as an
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: actual object. And like you were talking before, like you know,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I think people look at the that period as these
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: you know, backward people that would do something like this,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and I think scholars of the Middle Ages try to
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: be a little kinder, uh and point out that while
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it was no picnic certainly to live back then because
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: of disease and uh no, no modern medicine and no
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: electricity and not very much plumbing. Um, it was no party,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: but they weren't like completely backward and it wasn't you know,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: just a culture full of maidens locked away in towers either,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: right exactly. And um, there's a USC professor named Lisa Battell.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's maybe how you say your last name.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: She um. She points out that like, like, yeah, they
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: had a different way of looking at things in the
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: medieval era, and there were lots of different politics and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: socio politics, but they weren't just stupid, you know, like
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: the the so the idea that that they that they
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: couldn't possibly have had jokes or you know, written things
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: in jest or whatever and basically pulled one over on
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: those of us alive today inadvertently is a falsehood. It's
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: actually seems to be the case for sure. Yeah, and
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: there were even some women who were writers who didn't
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: write under pseudonyms or pen names or anonymously. And I
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: don't think we're trying to make the case that it
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was just like a really progressive society or anything like that,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: but it may not be exactly as backward as as
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: we're led to believe. Yeah, it's like, take a look
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: at your own age for you know, for buddy, no kidding,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe put your own house in order first before
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: you go judging out right. Um, what's funny is that, Um,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: there really are chastity belts in existence today that are
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of recent manufacturer, but they're mostly made of latex and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: they're used almost exclusive le for B D s M.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: And I think, Chuck, we should just leave the listener
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: here to explain to whoever else they're listening with what
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: B D s M is. That's right, And maybe we
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: should do a podcast on that one day. Sure we'll
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: explain it for you later on. All right, Well that means,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of course, then everybody short stuff is out. Stuff you
• 12:23
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• 12:25
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